Access control systems are used to monitor access or admission to certain objects. In this context, an access control system is used to decide whether, for example, a person is granted access to a certain object.
In this context, access control systems can be used to control access to both physical objects and virtual objects, for example data.
In usual access control systems, people or key objects in the possession of the respective person are identified directly or indirectly and the authorization of the respective person to access the object determined. To determine this authorization, authorization data are specified for each person and used by the access control system. The authorization data show for each person whether or not a person may access the respective object.
In this context, the authorization data can also contain further information. For example, authorization for a person to access an object can be dependent on the time of day or the day of the week. For example, an employee can be granted admission to a development laboratory only on working days between 7:00 and 19:00.
The authorization data can also, for example, contain information on the type of authorization for a person. In a library, for example, a person may have the right to enter the reading room, but no right to borrow books. Similarly, a warehouse worker can have the right to enter the warehouse for purposes of his work, but only the delivery driver will have the right to remove objects from the warehouse.
To be able to use a conventional access control system, it is necessary to define the authorization to access an object for each user individually or at least for a group of users prior to the access of a user to the object and make this information available to the access control system.
The result of this is that an access control system can only be adapted to match a changing number of users with great effort.